“The Land That Never Melts”

Auyuittuq is an absolutely gorgeous national park running through Pangnirtung Pass on Baffin Island in the Eastern Arctic. The word “Auyuittuq” is Inuit for “The Place that Never Melts” ( check ). A former colleague of mine at COGLA swears he knows how this majestic piece of territory came to be declared a park. If his story is to be believed, around about 1976, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development in the Government of Canada, the Honourable Jean Chretien, the same Jean Chretien who is now the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada, was flying over Baffin on his return trip south. He gazed down at these alpine peaks and a valley between them. For a moment or two he quietly took in the breathtaking beauty, before turning to his aides and enquiring, in his inimitable French accent: “Wats dat down dair?” One of the aides peered out the window and asked the PM “Down where, Minister?” So, Chretien pointed to the pass and said “Right dair, dose mountains, what are dey call?” The aide responded that they were flying over Pangnirtung Pass, whereupon the PM promptly declared them a national park. He then went on to instruct them to draw up plans for its creation.

Evidently these aides were used to their Minister exhibiting this kind of phlegmatic, impulsive behavior. Accordingly, they promptly ignored his instructions, hoping he would forget about them. Not so! A couple of weeks later, in the course of a briefing, the Minister asked “Where’s my park?; what happened wit my park?” The aides assured him that it was in the pipeline and that they would have a park development plan to put before him shortly. They then went away and hastily prepared such a plan, and when they eventually showed it to him he took one look at the map and the park boundaries and poked his finger at it, saying “Dat’s not where I wanted it”. So, the aides went back to the drawing board and came back with a revised plan that did meet the Minister’s approval. And that is how Auyuittuq National Park came into existence.

Auyuittuq is one of Canada’s remotest and least visited national parks: when I was there in 1991 only about 200 fortunate souls got to trek through it each year. And yet, many more have had a glimpse of at least part of the park through the James Bond film “On Her majesty’s Service” ( check). That film starts with a famous scene of James Bond skiing off the top of a mountain. The scene was filmed at great expense on Mt. Asgard, which is shaped like a tree stump. The stunt man who stood in for Roger Moore was reportedly offered $1,000,000 by some company if he would perform the stunt again for a commercial, but he never did.

The park itself is spectacularly beautiful. It encompasses the highest mountains in Eastern North America. There are two main reasons for the low numbers of people who visit it: it is hard to get to, and the summer season is very short. It is possible to visit the region in winter: mountain climbing and cross country skiing are practised there by a few hardy souls each year, but it is even more difficult and expensive to get there at that time of year, and the weather can be pretty fierce. The park is only officially open from around the beginning of July until the end of August. The reason for this exceedingly short season is that before that the rivers formed by the glacial and snow melt are swollen, making passage virtually impossible; after about August 15, on the other hand, winter is already beginning to set in.

There are two entrances to Auyuittuq: the northern approach has you coming in via Broughton Island, while the southeastern approach has you coming in via Overlord. I came in via Overlord. What makes this way of entering the park interesting is that to get to Overlord you have to hire a freighter canoe in Pangnirtung, using an Inuit guide. A freighter canoe is basically just a small fishing vessel with an outboard. The trip takes about an hour and a half. Because it costs about $200 to rent the boat, and this is basically the only way to get into the park from “Pang”, individual trekkers often will wait in Pang until there are enough people to make the voyage economical. When we were in the park we met one chap who had waited three days.

Pang itself is a lovely little town of 1500 people. It was originally selected as a trading post by the Hudson Bay Company because of its good, deep harbour. Unfortunately, it is also cursed by very strong winds, which means that very often the airport is closed. Our tents got fairly blown away at the community campground where we pitched camp the first night. The whole time we were there gale force winds whirled about. You cannot use tent pegs in Pang because everything is rock. So, you have to fasten the tent down with boulders, and this does not always do the trick. What can you expect when the campground itself is free?

There is little to do in Pangnirtung except walk around town, visit the Bay and Coop stores, and register at Park headquarters. There is a map on the wall there indicating where polar bears have been sighted within the park in the course of the past fifteen years. Not surprisingly, the pinpricks are located mainly along the coast; the bears apparently will only venture inland if they are starving to death. Brochures are also provided on safety, likely weather conditions, rubbish removal ( garbage in, garbage out ), and other practical matters. There is not much risk of avalanche at this time of year ( late July ); rock slides are a bigger concern, as the terrain is littered with shale. The big danger up here is hypothermia, because in the weather can change very abruptly. One minute you’ll be walking around in your shirtsleeves, and the next minute you can be drenched with sleet. Swollen rivers also have to be forded perhaps four or five times a day; fall into one of those and you may never recover. The conditions are so damp in the park that if you get a piece of clothing wet it can be several days before it dries.

There are no lodging facilities within the park boundaries. In other words, you have to camp outdoors while hiking. A number of small refuges have been built, however, at six or seven kilometre intervals. These are very small, just a tad larger than an outhouse. You cannot really lie down in one of them, but you can light a fire to warm yourself up. There is also a radio which you can use to call for help in the event of an emergency. Other than that, the park is pretty well unspoiled: the only real evidence of man being the inukshuk or trailmarkers lining the route. These inukshuks have come to be the symbol of the Arctic; they are made simply by arranging rocks on top of each other in such a way that they resemble humans. It is thought that the Inuit use these inukshuk to indicate caribou hunting grounds ( check ). We saw no caribou during our trip, and the only Inuit we saw were park employees who regularly travel along the trails picking up litter as they go.

I had wanted to take this kind of adventure trek for years. Most of my travels have been either work or study-related; this was one of those rare occasions when I could just forget everything and enjoy myself. Not one to enjoy sitting on a tour bus or lying in a hammock on the deck of a cruise ship, my Arctic hiking trip was a once in a lifetime opportunity to explore some unique landscapes and get some vigorous exercise in the process. Not since my years in Switzerland had I done any serious Alpine hiking. I also thought it would be a good way to meet some new people with a shared love of the great outdoors and hiking. Before leaving for Pang I went out and bought all the latest gear, including an enormous backpack, a Gore-Tex parka, ‘quick-dry’ rain pants ( one of our guides aptly called them ‘quick-wet’ as well ). I even brought a ski pole for maintaining balance on the trail and while fording streams. For reading I brought along Bury My Father’s Body: The Story of Minik, the New York Eskimo, by Kenn Harper.

I flew up to Iqaluit on my own from Ottawa via Montreal. At the airport in Iqaluit I was to meet the two guides and eight ? other hikers with whom I would be spending the next eleven days; they had all flown up directly from Ottawa with another airline. I had flown via Montreal because I was using some frequent flier points, and this was where my airline flew from. I had been determined to get along well with this group, to maintain a positive, cheery outlook, and to be sociable. But what I found was that in the course of the brief, three hour flight from Ottawa, the group had already started to act as a unit. I felt somewhat left out and ignored, and I felt I had some catching up to do. Fortunately, an opportunity presented itself to demonstrate my solidarity with the group. One of the participants, Peter Martin from England, had all his luggage lost by the airline he was flying with from London to Ottawa. He had been able to buy most of his replacement gear in Ottawa in the space of twenty-four hours, but he still needed a few items, including gloves and hat. I quickly volunteered to take him around some shops in Iqaluit. One or two other hikers joined us, and within no time he found what he wanted, including the most dashing Austrian alpine fedora, replete with feather! Peter turned out to be the most amusing and sociable companion of the entire bunch.

There were few if any formal introductions at Iqaluit airport. From the knot of people gathered around the luggage carousel I picked out the male and female I figured were the guides, and introduced myself. The others I was never really introduced to at all; they were just like people you meet haphazardly and spend a bit of time with before moving on. What I was to find was that many of them were not all that interested in meeting other people on this trip; they only went with this party because there is not much choice. Travel in this part of the country is so horrifically expensive that the only way most people can afford it is to go with a group. The group also had the advantage of a guide. It turned out that you do not really need guides on a trip like this, but I reckon that many people would not make the journey if it were not for the fact that it is a guided tour. There is just something about the Arctic that terrifies people; they think that without someone who knows the territory they are going to die some kind of horrible death. What I found is that all you really need for such a trip is to go with someone who has been there before and knows the ropes.

Our merry little band consisted of two guides and nine intrepid hikers, including myself. Our guides were Hugh and Karen, a most unlikely combination. Hugh was a very young and cocky student who did this kind of thing every summer. He had guided several groups in the Arctic before, but this was the first time he had done it with hikers. Hugh was a canoeist, and had been down the Nahanni several times. For all his youth, he had a forceful personality. He was really meant to back Karen up and to cook, but he ended up more or less running the whole show. Although Hugh was a rather intense chap, he had a great sense of humour. When things go wrong or the weather is miserable day after day, this can make all the difference. Karen, by contrast, was a quiet, sullen, very down-to-earth person. She was forty-something. Her full-time job was bookkeeper for the outfitting company that arranged the trip. Obviously an outdoor-freak herself, this was the one occasion each year when she could get out of the office, away from the books, and guide a group. Karen was a capable lady, a single mother with a boy at college. One could probably count on her in an emergency to demonstrate her survival skills. But in this particular group, which consisted for the most part of extroverts, yuppies and rugged individuals, Karen had trouble maintaining control and exercising authority. At the outset, she seemed totally in control, but in her own quiet, no-nonsense way. We had all paid top dollar for this adventure, and I got the feeling that each of us wanted to get the most out of it that we possibly could. Karen, on the other hand, was one of those who believes in quiet enjoyment. I don’t think she could ever accept that we would come all this way to laugh and joke or even chat on the trail. Two-thirds of our way through our trip I can recall her sitting atop a rock looking out over the majestic scenery; I imagined her looking for divine inspiration. Later on, I learned from a lone American hiker who she had a long chat with in a refuge that she was at wit’s end with this bunch of malcontents. By the end, she seemed a broken person, thinly disguising her disappointment and contempt for this unruly bunch. Sadly, within a year of that trip her son was to die with a couple of other students in a car accident.

The hikers themselves were a ragtag collection of outdoor enthusiasts. Most tended to be in their thirties and forties, although there was one lady in her sixties, Dorothy, an eccentric, ill-tempered transplanted Englishwoman who should be banned from the Arctic for life! There was a couple from Toronto. The woman had trouble keeping up, and hubby very patiently waited for her at ever turn. You could tell he was dying to just take off, but he never complained. I learned later from Hugh that the wife was around one month pregnant when the trip started, which pissed me off no-end! I never really hit it off with this couple. Couples should not really go on these trips, because their primary allegiance is to each other instead of the group. This particular couple stuck together like glue, although I must say the gentleman was an excellent dishwasher. I never really hit it off with these two: she never said boo, and all he could talk about was cars and houses.

There was another couple as well. Marianne was a vivacious grandmother in her early forties, while her husband Dick was a grizzled Englishman in his late forties. These two were both serious campers. They seemed to live for these kinds of trips. For forty-six weeks of the year they were civil servants at Statistics Canada. From what I could tell, they spent all their time planning their summer vacations. There biggest passion was canoeing. They had already ‘done’ several northern rivers, and they were hoping to ‘do’ the Thomson on Banks Island the following year. They both had all the latest Arctic clothing and kit, and they were dressed identically, head to toe. All they could ever talk about was canoeing and hiking, and the paraphernalia associated with these activities. These two were really just in it for themselves; they never lifted a finger or pitched in to do chores the whole eleven days.

In addition to myself, there were five individual hikers in the party, two females and three males. One of those ladies was Dorothy, who I have already briefly described. Dorothy was our resident eccentric. With her heavy gear and old-fashioned clothing, she would have fit in well with the Scott expedition to the Antarctic. She looked like an old school marm. Most of the time she wore a rubber poncho over her bulky backpack. She also carried a very bent wooden walking stick. The combination of these two made her look like a wicked witch, which she was in a way. For all her faults, Dorothy was exceedingly fit; she had spent most of the past six weeks toughing herself up for this adventure. This culminated in two weeks of backpacking in the Purcells in the province of British Columbia, her adopted home. Consequently, Dorothea climbed up and down the skree faster than anybody. Unfortunately, she did nothing but complain the entire trip. Evidently she was not of the old ‘mustn’t grumble’ school. Nothing was ever right for dear Dorothy. For instance, it rained quite a bit on our trip, but then suddenly the sun would break out from the clouds. All Dorothy could ever talk about was the rain! There was nothing anyone could do about the ghastly weather; one just had to get on with hiking and try to get as much enjoyment out of the experience as possible. But not our Dorothy. She was bad for morale. To make things worse, she was another one of these useless twits who never did a stitch of work the whole time.
Everyone avoided her like the plague.

Then there was Lawrence. Dear old Lawrence! He was an engineer working on fibre optics at Bell Northern Research. Lawrence was a very even-tempered young man in his early thirties. He had a permanent smile on his face, and seemed to get along with everyone He was only about five foot four, but quite strong. With his big backpack towering above his head he reminded me of those first astronauts walking on the face of the moon. He was a very steady hiker, with oodles of stamina. He worked such long hours, I cannot for the life of me figure out how he became so fit, but Lawrence was one of those people who never wasted a minute in a day. I got to know him when we returned south, and I discovered that he did volunteer work. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus, and during the winter taught blind or retarded kids downhill skiing. Not only that, he had a small computer business called Spider Graphics which operated out of his house. He was also something of a party boy, even going so far as to bring a flask along with him to Auyuittuq. Built like a fireplug, he had somewhat of a waddle as he blazed trail. Photography was another one of his other passions, so much so that he brought a tripod up north with him. This annoyed me no end, as this meant he could not take much of the common gear we had to apportion. In the end, though, I was glad he had brought all this expensive camera gear along, because he put together an amazing slide show of the trip, complete with background music.

Lawrence’s tentmate was the Englishman Peter, the one who had lost all his luggage. Peter was the real character of the trip. He was a real dandy, the consummate English gentleman. It was hard to tell how old he was, but I would hazard a guess that he was in his late thirties. Peter sort of reminded me of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. He was thin as a reed, very dapper, and he was always whistling. He was forever in a good mood, and always telling jokes and funny stories. If he had any flaw, it was that he just could not shut up. It was constant chatter with Peter: if there were some beautiful flowers up ahead, Peter would feel compelled to talk about them, compare them to flowers in England, or launch into a treatise on flowers in general. This really got a bit much; I myself could just about take it in stride, but I know that others were more or less fed up by the end. Peter was an Oxford grad, working for Kluwers, the Dutch-owned publishing firm out of London. He belonged to a gentleman’s club in London, lived in Mayfair or Kensington, and tooled around town in a very sporty Alfa Romeo. He had a lot of dash and panache. When my fiancee and I were in London the year following my Arctic trek, we looked Peter up, and he graciously picked us up and took us to lunch at a lovely outdoor cafe. At one time in his life Peter had thought of emigrating to Canada. He had a girlfriend in Halifax, but they broke up and so he changed his mind about coming over. Peter and Lawrence got along famously. You could hear them in their tent late at night laughing and swapping stories. Then, early in the morning they would be up and at it again, seemingly resuming their conversation. It was as if they were old friends. Peter was such a civilised chap that he brought his battery-powered razor with him; this made a very load buzzing sound, which irked me and others no end, as it detracted from the wilderness experience.

In stark contrast to the rapport between these two, there was virtually no contact between myself and my tentmate Paul. This man, who I guess was in his mid-thirties, was the classic loner. He just refused to talk; it was as simple as that. He had only signed up for this trip at the last possible minute, in contrast to most of the rest of us, who had been looking forward to the adventure for many months. He happened to be very fit, and a good hiker, to the point where he would sometimes climb the sides of the valley after our scheduled daily hike had ended and we had pitched camp. But he was totally asocial. He should never have come on this trip. He had no appreciation for the Arctic, and no communication skills. He simply refused to engage in chitchat. It was as if he had taken a vow of silence. I remember one rain day, for instance, when we all just lay around reading, writing letters or what have you. Paul was lying on his sleeping bag reading a book. I tried to draw him out by asking him what the book was, and how he enjoyed it. He gave the most monosyllabic responses that I could see he resented my asking. I could sense he was ignoring me, so from then on I gave him the silent treatment as well. It was a very strange experience for me, for like most people, I just wanted to be liked. With Paul, however, I could see that he was the same with everybody. One or two of the other hikers even came up to me and asked “What’s with this guy?” I felt that I had spent good money on this trip, and I was not going to let him spoil it. I just pretended he was not even there. In the end, I never even said goodbye to him.

The last person in our entourage was a lady from Alberta who was studying music at the University of Toronto. Funny, but I cannot recall her name. I really liked her, and I think everyone did, really. She really had her act together. She was bright, witty, pretty, and quite a good hiker to boot. She seemed very confident of her own abilities, without being at all boastful or competitive. I admired her for the fact that she had come on this trip all alone. It was her first trip to the Arctic, and she took great interest in everything. She also had a wry sense of humour. She had us all in stitches when she described some public figure we all knew as being “A nice guy, but he shits too close to the house!” I have often wondered what became of her. I would like to think that she is happily married, with children, and well-ensconced in a musical career.

I was expecting a lot from this trip. First, I had read about the spectacular alpine scenery in the region, and second, I was looking forward to some serious hiking. The outfitting company’s brochure describing the trip warned prospective clients that you had to be quite fit to sign up for this trek. I had read a number of articles about Auyuittuq, and a friend of a friend had done the same trip a couple of years before. Thus, I had an inkling of what to expect. I also knew that the weather could be very iffy. I was basically prepared for anything, but above all I suppose I wanted a bit of a challenge. The kind of challenge I wanted was a physical one, although I kind of expected a ‘social’ one as well, since I am a rugged individualist and I expected most of the others to be as well. I suffered one or two minor disappointments before our party even reached the trailhead.

The first involved sharing the communal gear. I never anticipated there would be so much equipment supplied by the outfitters. The kit consisted mainly of the tents, tarpaulins, food and cooking supplies, plus first aid kit. I had packed by knapsack so that I would not have a heavy load on my back. I had also left room for a modest amount of the common gear. But I had no idea there would be so much to apportion. What really ticked me off was that some people, one couple in particular, had brought tons of personal stuff, leaving virtually no room in their packs for anything else. The worst offender of all was Lawrence, who brought his bloody 18 inch tripod along; it must have weighed six or seven pounds. It may not seem like much, but as far as I could see this meant that someone else would have to lug an equivalent amount around. In fairness to Lawrence, most of the time he did hang the tripod onto the outside of his pack; so, it did not really take up extra space. But the fact remains that there is only so much weight anyone can reasonably be expected to carry around for ten days and more, and a tripod was an expendable item. Then there was Dorothy, who patently refused to carry anything that was not her own. Dear old Dorothy was truly our problem child.

The second thing that bugged me about this trip before we even set off was that we were informed at the very last moment in Pangnirtung that we were going to be used as guinea pigs for a promotional film that had been commissioned by Parks Canada. The idea was to have a helicopter follow us around for the better part of our trek, filming our progress and using the majestic scenery as a backdrop. This news created very bad vibes amongst us. We were told by our guide Hugh that the Park Warden had requested our participation in this stunt. It seems that he had already made arrangements with the film crew, Blackwater Films out of Houston, of all places. When someone rightly asked why we had not been consulted in advance, the explanation forthcoming was that there had not been enough time. I do not believe this for one minute; I am sure they were afraid we would say no; I certainly would not have hesitated to withhold consent. As it was, I held my tongue, while one couple seemed all gung-ho. Privately, I was appalled, and I could tell that several others felt likewise. We had, after all, paid a small fortune for a wilderness experience, and now someone was informing us that we would basically be extras for a film. We were asked to sign some kind of waiver or release form, but I never did sign it. Come to think of it, nobody did; I believe Hugh just signed on behalf of the group. The tried to bribe everyone by promising each and every one of us a copy of the video when it came out.

In actual fact, the filming did not turn out to be such a big deal. True, every day we could hear and see a helicopter overhead, but most of us just tried to block it out. For all we knew, it was someone else’s helicopter on a supply or rescue mission; there being no roads through the Pass, a helicopter was the only way in other than by Shank’s pony. Only when we reached the halfway point did the chopper come in for a landing near our encampment. Out jumped a cameraman and another man, evidently the director. After an animated consultation between Hugh and the director, we were asked to look smart and walk single file away from the camera. Anyone who did not want to be filmed was asked to step aside, something only dear old crotchety Dorothy had the guts to do. Secretly I admired her for being true to her beliefs. As for myself, I did not want to create a scene. I suppose I also felt an obligation to Hugh. The whole episode was terribly embarrassing. The only people who showed any enthusiasm were Marianne and Dick; the director picked them out because of their colourful, matching anoraks. They were tickled pink to be asked to appear in a sort of cameo role. Anyway, that was the end of it. The film crew got the unsubtle hint that they were not wanted. They hightailed it out of there, never to be seen again. When we returned to Park HQ at Overlord several days later, I lodged a complaint about the whole affair on the official suggestions paper provided to exiting hikers.

About two years later, not having received a copy of the film, I contacted the branch of Parks Canada in Hull, Quebec to see what had become of the film. Lo and behold, I was informed that it had been produced about a year ago. When I explained the whole drama to my contact, he very graciously offered to provide me with a copy of the fifteen minute video tape. It turned out to be very artistic. It was done in the style of Koyanaatsaqi?, i.e. sped up with shots of fast-moving clouds moving over mountains, etc. Almost all of it was shot from a helicopter, but instead of the drone of a helicopter there was Vangelis-type music in the background. It was not at all as I had expected. I figured it was going to be a straight promotional film, with a voice telling people about the park, how to get there, what to expect, and so on and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps this was in line with Parks Canada policy at the time, which was apparently not to heavily promote use of this particular park, for some obscure reason. The real coup de grace was that the merry band of Black Feather travellers ( for that is the name of the outfitting group ) was nowhere to be seen. Whether in a fit of pique or because of fears over copyright I do not know, but we did not even make it into the credits. The whole thing was incredibly bizarre: a film about a park that the government did not want people to visit; a bunch of extras most of whom did not want to be filmed; and a film crew which made promises it did not keep. We, the hikers, were treated with utter contempt by all concerned: Black Feather, the park administration and Blackwater Films. Just who did they think we were? If they were horses, they would all be lined up in back of a barn and shot!

The trek itself was memorable. Basically we followed a river bed about thirty-five kilometres up into the mountains before turning back and retracing our steps. This only averages out to about seven or eight kilometres of hiking per day. But those seven or eight kilometres were hard-won. We were in effect in a ravine. Two thousand metre peaks towered over both sides of the river; they lined the pass like sentinels. They each had Norse names such as Thor, etc. The presence of these peaks meant that there were eskers all over the place. Thus, for about half of the time we were either hiking up one side of the esker or coming down the other. Then there were the streams to cross. In any given day we might have to ford three or four of these. I came to dread this part of the journey: every time I could see a stream off in the distance I would cringe. You could always see them from quite a distance because they were like babbling brooks. The larger, deeper and swifter ones fortunately had some type of bridge built across them, usually either a rope bridge or a wooden foot bridge. The streams were fed by the late snow melt from the upper reaches of the valley. The water was frigid, so cold in fact that to drink it straight away would give one a massive headache; the only way around this was to keep some in one’s water bottle until it reached air temperature, which was usually around 10 degrees centigrade.

Fording these streams was a living nightmare. In addition to the numbing cold of the water, it could be extremely treacherous traversing the streams with a heavy pack on one’s back. There would be many rocks and boulders in the water, and they would often be hidden. The currents could be very swift. Thank god I had my ski pole with me; it proved indispensable for keeping my balance as well as probing the water in front for rocks. One could very easily slip on these rocks and tumble into the water. We were therefore taught two tricks to employ in the event of this occurring. The first was to try to fall towards the direction of the current, so that if one did topple over at least one stood a chance of regaining an upright position. The second was to undo the chest strap on one’s backpack and balance the pack on only one shoulder, so that one could easily jettison it in the event of an emergency. It was very easy for the base of the pack to trail into the water, pulling one over in the process. Some of these streams were not all that bad: you could just leapfrog across them. Others, however, were like raging torrents, and one would have to roll up one’s pant legs or even take of one’s boots before fording them. I was really impressed with how the other members of the party handled these periodic challenges: there was very little grumbling, and no one ever really got completely soaked. Invariably I would be last to effect a crossing, partly because I would first do a reccy to determine the most suitable crossing point.

One of the things that often flabbergasts the first-time visitor to the Arctic is the riot of colour. Auyuittuq is no exception to this: for a very brief period of perhaps six weeks the combination of light and warmth produce all manner of plants to bloom and flower. The most predominant colour is purple, from the carpet of heather which covers virtually everything. When we were not traversing a moraine or walking along a beach, we were trekking through the most beautiful, two-inch thick moss. Flowers included ... ( check park literature, Equinox article ). These colours always managed to brighten up even the grey, rainy days, of which there were many. One of the unfortunate things about this part of the world during the summer is the weather. It reminded me a lot of the Scottish highlands, where, as the saying goes: “If you can see the hills, it’s going to rain; if you can’t see the hills, it’s already rainin’!

Life is funny like that: you may $2000 for the trip of a lifetime in the Arctic, and it ends up raining two thirds of the time. Hiking can get pretty miserable when you there is a steady mist and you can’t see ten feet in front of you. It is especially demoralising when you know from the pictures in the park literature that there are majestic peaks all around you. But then, without any warning, the rain stops and the clouds roll back, revealing clear skies and those wonderful mountains. Suddenly everything is as you hoped it would be, until the next shower, which is probably about twenty minutes away! The trick is to take the good with the bad, and not to complain about the lousy weather, at least not while you are in the middle of it. But then there is always someone like Dorothy in the group, complaining incessantly about dampness and downpour. Bad medicine, that one!

Even allowing for the fact that we were carrying heavy packs on our backs over uneven terrain, I found the pace we were hiking at incredibly leisurely. Most mornings we would not get on the trail before 9 AM. Furthermore, we generally stopped for the day by 4 PM at the latest. It was extraordinary! It was not as if we were pushing it in between: on the contrary, there were several impromptu pit stops in between, plus a half hour for lunch. I suppose this routine was designed to prevent anyone from getting too tired, but in practice it meant that the guides were catering to the lowest common denominator. Sure, a significant amount of time was required to pick up camp in the morning and set camp later that day. But even so, we were left with what I thought was an enormous amount of idle time. I kept derisively referring to this outing as an ‘executive hiking’ trip, which the others only found mildly amusing. I felt really cheated. Okay, I had run the Boston Marathon the year before, and not everyone could be expected to hike eight or ten hours per day, but I still feel that we were wasting an inordinate amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I am not one of those who believes that any outdoor experience has to be a gruelling endurance test for it to be worthwhile. It’s just that for me hiking was the whole point of the exercise, and not an afterthought, as the angle the organisers seemed to approach it from. To make things worse, I am a very early riser; on that particular trip, I was seldom asleep after 4:30 AM. As breakfast was rarely before 7:30, I would have three hours to kill before eating. The whole thing was driving me absolutely nuts. No one was ever consulted about this schedule; we were just expected to go along with it, and apparently I was the only one who did not like it.

What made this trip memorable was the very special landscape, and the fact that we were so far removed from civilisation. It was like another world, and nothing like anything I had ever seen or done before. Sure, I had hiked in Switzerland many times; I had also visited the Rockies and Adirondacks. But this was completely different. It reminded me of the film Raiders of the Lost Ark. One minute we would be sauntering along a beautiful beach, whistling the theme song from Bridge on the River Kwai, the sun beating down on us. The next minute we would be struggling up the side of a moraine, rain and wind lashing our faces. The next hurdle might be a mass of boulders which we would have to scramble over. Before we knew it, we would come to a raging torrent that we would have to cross somehow, whether by wading through it, walking across it, or by taking a pulley bridge. Finding a suitable campsite was always an adventure in itself. Every night was different; Hugh had been given directions on how to get to various locations by a guide who had been through in previous years The first night we stayed on a grassy slope with a magnificent view of the river and valley ahead; we were surrounded by enormous boulders that had apparently broken off from the sheer, two-hundred metre cliffs just behind us. I had no idea whether they had just fallen there recently, or had instead been there for thousands or even millions of years. There is a certain timelessness about the whole area that is striking. I lay awake in my sleeping bag that night, wondering what the chances were of another one of them crushing us to death that night. Another night we camped by a small pond edged with colourful flowers.

If you choose to trek the Pangnirtung Pass, you do not have much choice when it comes to routes: you either go up one side of the river or the other, with of course the possibility of alternating the route on the way back down. For some reason, our guide chose to go in and out the same way. Perhaps it had something to do with the cache of food and surplus equipment we had stashed at the midway point. Because for the most part once you have decided to take one side or the other you cannot really change your mind: there is only one pulley bridge across the river, and that is near the top, by Glacier Lake. The upshot of all this was that our journey was a little bit more boring than it might have been, although we did carry lighter loads.

In eleven days on the trail, we ran in to no more than a dozen other hikers. When we did, it was always a big event: being out there in the middle of nowhere, there was a tremendous sense of sharing an experience. I figure that if they can issue bumper stickers proudly proclaiming “This car climbed Mount Washington”, then surely someone could come up with one saying “This person hiked Pangnirtung Pass ( or part of it, at least )”. There were two parties we kept running in to the whole time. First there was an amiable fellow named Gary and his two female companions, Connie and Colleen. All three of them were biologists with the Canadian Wildlife Service, and this was a sort of busman’s holiday for them. Gary, for example, would go from Baffin to Coates Island in the middle of Hudson Bay, where he would spend the remainder of the summer counting thick-billed murres, as he had done the two previous summers as well. Tagging along with our group was a way of getting a cheap ride in from Pang to Overlord; it was also a good way to play the odds, since there is safety in numbers. That trio seemed to progress at an even more leisurely pace than us; they could be heard giggling in their three person tent even while we were breaking camp. Evidently they were having a ball! The other party consisted of two young mountain climbers, one of whom worked at Trailhead, who own Black Feather, our outfitters. After about four days, these two left us to head up to the peaks for the first of their assaults. The only other people I recall running into were a group of very hardy public school boys from Toronto, plus a lone American who seemed to be on some sort of personal quest to overcome a combination of depression and respiratory problems. The Yank seemed to hit it off very well with our guide Karen; he told me that she had poured her heart out to him over a chance encounter in a refuge during one of our frequent stops.

At the midway point along our route, at the top end of Glacier Lake ( check name ), in one of the refuges there is a plaque. It is in memory of a lone hiker from Almonte, Ontario, who had died there from hypothermia a few years earlier. I was quite moved by this memorial. In a way I guess I could identify with this poor chap. The same fate could have befallen any of us. I found it ironic that I could feel so close to some total stranger who I not only had never met, but could never meet in the future. I asked myself: is nature cruel? In my heart of hearts I knew that nature is neither mean nor compassionate; rather, it is indifferent. One minute this hapless fellow is walking along humming a tune, and the next minute life is slipping away from him. That night we pitched camp over the hill, above the lake, at the base of the Turner Glacier. I made a joke about this being a great site for a thriller novel by a fictitious author named “Moraine Turner Glacier”; Hugh was in hysterics over that one! The weather was beautiful that evening. During the night I could here what I thought was thunder, but what turned out to be icebergs breaking off the glacier and crashing into the lake like a newly-christened ship going down its slipway. It was an ominous sound.

When I awoke next morning I could not believe what was going on: the wind was howling all around the tent, and from the sagginess of the dome tent’s roof I could tell it was laden with snow. The temperature had also dropped about fifteen degrees centigrade. I got out of my down-filled sleeping bag, threw some clothes on, and unzipped the tent flap. Outside there was a raging blizzard. There was only about 15 centimetres of snow, but because it was whirling all over the place, drifts were forming. The important thing was that we appeared to, be safe: the tents all seemed to be secure, and a quick check revealed that everybody was alive and well. I was amazed at how unconcerned our guides were about this development; neither of them seemed to exercise any form of leadership. Because I was the first one up and therefore onto the situation, I felt like I was more or less in command. Moreover, perhaps because of my Arctic winter experience, I had quite a bit of confidence. The first decision we took was to stay put until conditions improved. For all we knew this could have been a few days, but we were hoping that the storm would quickly end and the snow would start melting. There was nothing to do but wait and hope.

We started by getting a warm drink into us. The tents were too small to cook anything else, so we just ate chocolate bars and other snack food. We passed the time by playing cards, and moving from one tent to the next for variety’s sake. The Arctic being what it was, the snow stopped by mid-morning, by noon the sun was out, and much of the snow at our altitude had already melted. We decided to make a break for it. We hiked until around six pm, at which time we pitched camp for another night. It was as if nothing had ever happened: the weather was just as it had been two days previous. What we had experienced must have been some sort of freak storm; either that, or it had something to do with camping at the base of a glacier. Perhaps the glacier produced a microclimate.

The atmosphere in the group seemed to change after that brief winter tempest. I personally felt quite pissed off with the guides. At the end of our second day of hiking in the park, we had debated whether the third day should be a day of rest or whether instead we should plug on. Hugh pointed out that two or three days of slack time had been provided for, in case the weather was inclement or we needed a rest. I and one or two others strongly argued that we should press on, first of all because hiking was what we had come here to do, and second of all because I felt we should make hay while the sun shone. Because the longer we were to wait the lousier the weather was likely to be, it seemed only logical to me that we should just keep going until we got tired or it rained. (At that stage I never imagined our being snowbound!). Above all, I just could not believe that anyone could be tired after only two days on the trail. It turned out, though, that at least two or three others in the group wanted the next day off, not so much to recover as to simply laze around. I was completely flummoxed by this. Nevertheless, we voted on it and I was outvoted. So, when the blizzard occurred several days later, I naturally felt that we would have missed it had we not taken that first rest day. Who knows? The long and the short of it was, once we started back down the trail, basically retracing our steps on the way up, I was starting to look forward to the end of the trip; the charm had worn off.

Because we were going downhill on the return journey, we made very good time. It only took us about four days to return to Overlord. The views were even more spectacular than our ascent, for some reason. The whole valley seemed to be laid out before us, whereas on our way up all we could really see were peaks and more peaks. The descent also made me feel that I had accomplished something, the reward being easier hiking. I doubt I was the only one eager to return to Pangnirtung; after ten days on the trail you have run out of clean socks and underwear, the food, which was not very good to begin with becomes tasteless, and the conversation starts to run thin. Nonetheless, the most memorable part for me was the final stretch along the beach and mud flats towards Overlord, a distance of perhaps five kilometres. Peter and Lawrence and I fairly skipped along those flats, singing “ I Love to Go a Wandering” with great gusto, oblivious to what anyone else in the group thought. By this stage, we had also broken ranks with the others; in the back of our minds I think we all felt fed up with having to stop and wait for stragglers.

Sure enough, back at Overlord our Inuit guide was waiting for us in his freighter canoe. We had to wait a while until high tide allowed us to come aboard. By around 4 pm we were back in Pangnirtung, setting up camp at the public campground. As luck would have it, gale force winds were blowing all around us. We had to decide whether to tough it out at the campground, or find a place to stay indoors. Hugh did some scouting around and got the Anglican Church to agree to house anybody who wanted in the church hall, at $15 per person, passing the hat. I did not have one cent on me, since Black Feather had told us we would not need any money for anything. So, I did not pay. All but my tentmate took up the offer; to his credit, he toughed it out. Apparently the winds died down later in the evening, proving once again that the Arctic is totally unpredictable.

The first thing anyone wants when he or she comes off the trail like that is to have a nice, long, hot bath or shower. The only place to do this in Pang was at the Auyuittuq Lodge, for $20 a crack! Again, I did not have the cash, but even if I did I would not have paid out on principle. It turned out that Hugh and Karen had showers, courtesy of Black Feather! This really pissed me off, because it was creating two classes of people in our group: those who were taken care of and those who were not. I figured that for $2000 the least the outfitters could have done was to have thrown in a shower on the house. But, oh, no, not these skinflints; they were the cheapest bunch of bastards I ever met, bar none.

To top it all off, I got in an argument that last night in the church hall. Some of the group wanted to play cards late at night. I put my foot down. I said that I had been very patient with everybody every morning, waiting for them to all get up. Now I was asking them to be patient with me for one night, letting me get to sleep. This did not exactly win me any popularity contests, but by then I could not really have cared less. So, things kind of ended on a sour note. The next morning some of us went and inspected the work of an Inuit carver working in front of his house. Then we got on the Dash 8 to Iqaluit for the first leg of our return journey south. At Iqaluit airport I did not even bother saying farewell to the rest of the group. I had felt a bit snubbed on our way in, so I decided to return the favour on the way out.